The essays have used these jumping-off places to explore
religion, science, and history. Even
when they may not appear to be intensely personal, they are.

Visitation to 21 Essays is slow but steady. Old posts
on King Kong and Chuck Jones are more popular than new ones on Abraham Joshua Heschel
and Kenji Mizoguchi, but that’s not a surprise. Frankly, it would be a
surprise to see Kenji Mizoguchi go viral. I suspect that the series on The Sabbath and Sansho the Bailiff will continue to steadily attract readers, just
like the old series on Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” continues
to draw the occasional viewer (perhaps even getting a spike of attention come
Christmas).

There’s a rumor that a new “For the Love of Film” blogathon
may be looming. If so, I hope to participate with an appropriate
series. If not, I probably won’t be doing a major series again until
October.

In the meantime, I hope to post sporadically, while enjoying a
little break. Doing a series is the equivalent of taking a college course—and
I’m trying hard to consistently publish “A” level work on the blog while
maintaining a full-time regular job and a healthy family life.

Pleased as I am with the series themselves, I’m still
looking for a better framework for them. I switched to an emphasis on
arbitrarily chosen years in January, but that approach has been too confining
to make me happy. I’ll continue to tinker.

A profound meditation on compassion and mercy, Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff (1954) builds its
power through the ethical wisdom of its narrative and the beauty and
power of its visual expression. The images embody the message.

Cruelty and mercy evenly divide this world. Although the
societal conventions of 1954 may have somewhat restrained the graphic
illustration of torture and cruelty, several scenes painfully suggest the
story’s horrific content—the brandings and mutilations. For this series
of six essays on Sansho the Bailiff,
I’m opting to concentrate on the answering scenes of compassion.

For each entry, there will be a two-pronged focus, first on the
ethics of Sansho the Bailiff and
second on visual analysis of targeted scenes.

The Ethics of Sansho the Bailiff: Compassion

Sansho the Bailiff tells
the story of the children Zushiô and Anju. Thanks to the sacrifice of his
sister Anju, Zushiô escapes the slave compound of Sanshô the Bailiff and is
reunited with his mother Tamaki. The movie opens with Zushiô and closes
with him. Therefore the movie might be more reasonably, and
informatively, called:

Zushiô
and Anju or Anju and Zushiô or

Zushiô
the Governor or Citizen Zushiô or even

Zushiô
Unchained.

Revisiting the book Figures Traced in Light by acclaimed film theorist David Bordwell, I was delighted
to see that he addresses one of the most puzzling mysteries of Sansho the Bailiff, namely:

“Why is it (the movie) named after him
(Sanshô)? I always ask my classes. Isn’t it a bit like changing the title of Othello to Iago? My own view is that for Mizoguchi the world we live in, unhappily for us, belongs to its bailiffs.”

This is my view, too. Sanshô is mean, vicious, and
sycophantic, but he’s not a rare breed. His kind still walks among
us. I read a quote today from the poet Philip Larkin that reminded me of
Sanshô:

“Most people, I’m convinced, don’t
think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent
consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they’re carried out feet
first.”

Sansho with a
branding iron.

Sanshô is a first-rate grabber of things he wants. In
his world, greed is the primary mover. When he presents a chest of
valuables to a royal envoy, he assumes that wealth can buy happiness. The
envoy responds just as expected—he wants wealth and power, too. This is
the world according to Sanshô. As Bordwell says, “the world we live in…
belongs to its bailiffs.”

But remember that Sanshô lives within the same prison walls
that enclose his slaves. They’re all inside together. Freedom is on
the other side. It’s not easy to cross over and is it even worth the
risk? Life is harsh on the other side as well.

Our last view of Sansho, trussed up and soon to be
sent into exile.

At the conclusion of Sansho the Bailiff, we are left with several worlds to
contemplate. There’s the ego-driven world of Sanshô. Contrasting
with that, there’s the benevolent world of Zushiô’s father Masauji, who
believes all people should be treated with mercy and compassion. Zushiô
returns to his father’s path, embracing the ideals that his father and sister
lived and died for. Neither ends well: Masauji is sent into exile and the movie closes with Zushiô in
poverty. This is the opposite of American prosperity theology where
goodness is rewarded by material wealth. As the end title appears on the
screen, this is what we’re left to grapple with—a choice to cast our lot with
either Sanshô’s materialist world or the impractical ethical idealism of
Zushiô’s father. We’ve seen that both roads can lead to unhappiness and exile.

Most of us are rarely presented with even that clear a
choice. There’s a third way, perhaps the easiest way, where one maneuvers
through life disengaged from the work of either ambition or mercy. The
final crane shot carries the viewer away from the love of Zushiô and Tamaki and
leaves us instead with a seaweed gatherer, calmly doing his job, oblivious of
the scene taking place nearby. It’s a haunting closing image that reminds
me of the concluding stanza of W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”:

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance:
how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The seaweed gatherer is like the ploughman. His life
goes on—he has work of his own to do—even as something amazing happens just
yards away.

The seaweed gatherer toiling on the shore.

Compassion Expressed
in Images

“Is the sea safe?”

Tamaki’s question is really beside the point. The sea
is unavoidable, inescapable.

In Sansho the
Bailiff, seas and lakes are emphatically not safe—they are strongly
associated with separation and death. Yet the movie also presents these bodies
of water as the settings for healing and mourning. They appear primal,
suggesting a world outside of time. In the essay “The Ghost Princess and
the Seaweed Gatherer,” film critic Robin Wood points out the difficulty of
assigning easy symbolic meanings to the imagery in Sansho the Bailiff:

“Mizoguchi never imposes symbolism on
the action. Accordingly, the significance of the recurrent imagery is to
be interpreted flexibly, in relation to the events with which it is
linked; as the film progresses, it accumulates complex emotional
overtones from the shifting juxtapositions, until by the end the visual
presence of the sea makes emotionally present for us all the past events with
which fire and water have been associated, becoming one of the means by which
Mizoguchi deepens and intensifies our response to the last scene as the point
to which every impulse in the film has moved.”

Above: A kidnapping at sea.
Below: A lament by the sea.

The children Zushiô and Anju are separated from their mother
Tamaki in a harrowing abduction scene in which Ubatake, the family servant, drowns. Later, Tamaki runs to the
sea in a hopeless attempt to escape from her life on SadoIsland,
only to be left crippled and crying for her lost children on a cliff overlooking
the ocean. Anju dies in a lake. As if in a series of pilgrimages,
Zushiô returns to each member of the family in the second half of the
movie. In each case, a body of water is positioned as an important
element within the frame. Zushiô visits his father’s grave, located at
the top of a hill with the sea in the background. He visits the lake
where his sister took her life. And he meets his mother in a cove by the
sea.

Zushio's pilgrimages to father, sister, and mother.

Zushio's descent to the cove,
with a giant tree in the foreground
and the sea in the background.

In the final scene, the sun is nearing the horizon as Zushiô
reaches the end of his quest. He enters a landscape that appears
timeless, passing giant trees and entering a picturesque cove, austere and
sheltered from the world. Life and death go unnoticed in this place—a
tsunami struck here two years previous, but no one seems to know the names or
the number of the dead. For another movie equivalent of the trees,
think of the Sequoias in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)…
and for the cove, both the stretch of beach where astronaut Taylor pounds the sand in Planet of the Apes (1968) and the beach where Anthony Quinn breaks down at the end of La Strada (1954). Quests often end at the shoreline.

Looking closely at that last scene in Sansho the Bailiff, the first shot—following Zushiô on his descent
into the cove—is introductory. Then the second shot serves as the real
beginning of the final sequence. This is the shot that will be reversed
to close the movie, forming a sublime set of bookends enclosing one of the most
moving scenes ever filmed. The opening bookend is a crane shot that
ascends to a significant height, finally uniting Zushiô and Tamaki within the
frame. Then, following eight medium shots and close-ups that take the
viewer through the heart-rending details of their reunion, Mizoguchi retreats
to a closing crane shot that leaves Zushiô and Tamaki, now clinging to each other
with nothing left to say, and pans left to end on a final image of the
steadily-working seaweed gatherer and the eternal sea.

Above: Zushio and Tamaki hug in the penultimate shot.
Below: Cut to a crane shot that pans left to return to
the image of the seaweed gatherer still at work.

Reference Sources

Personal Views: Explorations in Film by Robin Wood

Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato

“Sanshô dayûand the Overthrow of History”by Carole Cavanaugh, essay included with Criterion DVD

A profound meditation on compassion and mercy, Sansho the Bailiff (1954) builds its
power through the ethical wisdom of its narrative and the beauty and
power of its visual expression.

For each of these six entries, there will be a two-pronged focus, first on the
ethics of Sansho the Bailiff and
second on visual analysis of targeted scenes.

The Ethics of Sansho the Bailiff: Forgiveness

“One of the most profound human interactions is the offering
and accepting of apologies. Apologies have the power to heal humiliations
and grudges, remove the desire for vengeance, and generate forgiveness on the
part of the offended parties. For the offender, they can diminish the
fear of retaliation and relieve the guilt and shame that can grip the mind with
a persistence and tenacity that are hard to ignore. The result of the
apology process, ideally, is the reconciliation and restoration of broken
relationships.”

Aaron Lazare

On Apology

There are three scenes in Sansho the Bailiff that can reduce me to tears. Two of them
are obvious. Anju’s suicide and Zushiô’s climactic reunion with his
mother are widely acknowledged as emotional
powerhouses.

But there’s a third scene that I find nearly as powerful and
it’s received comparatively little attention. This is the short but
devastating scene where Zushiô voluntarily humbles himself and begs for
forgiveness:

Zushiô has been appointed governor of
the province. Remarkably self-composed, he asserts
himself within Sanshô’s compound, orders Sanshô taken prisoner, and then confidently
walks out of the manor to speak to the slaves. His voice breaking
with emotion, Zushiô declares that all slaves are now free, with a choice to
either leave or remain and work for fair wages. Zushiô pauses, seeing a
familiar face: Nio, an old man whom he once branded.

Zushiô kneels in front of Nio, who
studies his face and then recognizes him. The
brand is still clear on Nio’s forehead. Zushiô says: “My sins in branding you can never be
erased. But I ask you to let this (the declaration that frees the slaves)
make up for part of it.”

Zushiô’s apology refers back to the scene where he branded
Nio at the request of Sanshô. The branding was the rock bottom of Zushiô’s
character arc. To make it even more appalling, Zushiô’s cruelty is linked
to a subsequent scene where his mother Tamaki, living as a courtesan on the
far-away island of Sado, is brutally punished by her owner by having her
Achilles tendon cut to prevent her from further attempts at escape. In a
movie where family relations are paramount, Zushiô’s act is doubly condemned by
its association with a horrifying punishment exacted against his mother.
From this low point, the story documents the redemption of Zushiô, fueled
largely by the self-sacrificing act of his sister Anju.

Returning to his family’s ethics, Zushiô seeks redemption
through his political actions as governor by a morally just prohibition of
slavery in his province. But Zushiô cannot find redemption simply through
a well-meaning political act. He has to directly confront his past
actions in order to move ahead with his own life. He must kneel and
apologize. This act follows the definition of apology set forth by Aaron
Lazar, former Chancellor and Dean of the University of Massachusetts Medical
School, in his book On Apology:

“(The word) ‘apology’ refers to an
encounter between two parties in which one party, the offender, acknowledges
responsibility for an offense or grievance, and expresses regret or remorse to
a second party, the aggrieved.”

The personal encounter is necessary. Zushiô, the
offender, must accept responsibility and ask for remorse from Nio, the
aggrieved. The scene is even more moving for its stress on the difference
in social status between the two. The governor kneels and begs
forgiveness of the slave.

Then Zushiô stands and asks what has become of his
sister. As he learns the tragic news of Anju’s death, he realizes that
his redemption is not yet complete. The emotionally-wrenching apology is
only one step along the hard road that he must follow.

The scene immediately following the forgiveness scene:
Zushio visits the lake where his sister took her life.

Forgiveness Expressed
in Images

In interviews, director Kenji Mizoguchi promoted his
cinematic vision of one-shot/one-scene.
He asserted that a moving camera should be able to capture all necessary
details and build the appropriate emotional climate from the beginning to the end
of a scene. No cutting between shots should be necessary. In film
language, this approach privileges mise-en-scène (design and arrangement within
the frame) over montage (editing from one shot to the next).

In practice, Mizoguchi rarely held to the ideal that he
preached. While the key scenes in his
movies take strong advantage of crane shots, tracks, pans, and tilts, he
nevertheless usually cuts to individual shots. And the scenes are
typically more powerful for his intelligent, though limited, use of montage.

Zushio descends into the
crowd of Sansho's slaves.

The forgiveness scene in Sansho
the Bailiff approaches his one-shot/one-scene ideal. Starting at the
moment when Zushiô sweeps out of Sanshô’s manor, the scene consists of only two
shots. The one cut comes in the middle and is so smoothly handled that
the scene could easily be recalled as a single take.

The scene begins with an overhead exterior shot of Zushiô
grandly exiting Sanshô’s manor and walking down the steps into a crowd of
slaves. Zushiô’s bright ceremonial clothes brilliantly contrast with the
drab and ragged clothing of the slaves. As he moves toward the camera,
the camera keeps Zushiô centered in the action while slowly craning lower to finally
settle into an eye-level perspective. This visual approach establishes Zushiô’s
political control over the situation, even as he delivers his speech with
evident emotion. He dominates the shot, establishing him as a formidable
figure—to a much greater degree than Sanshô has ever been privileged in a shot.

Cut to…

The old slave Nio, the brand on his forehead fully visible.

Zushiô’s perspective, looking down upon Nio, the old slave
he once branded on the forehead. As Zushiô kneels, he re-enters the
frame. For their brief dialogue, Zushiô is filmed from behind (echoing
the earlier scene where he humbly listened to his father’s teachings).
Seen in closeup, Nio becomes the focus of the viewer’s attention. Their
shared humanity is emphasized, both through the visual composition and Zushiô’s
public apology.

When Zushiô stands, the camera rises with him (via a
tracking crane movement), following him as he retraces his steps back through
the crowd. As he approaches a group of women, the camera moves ahead of Zushiô
to create a new composition. Instead of the primary focus upon Zushiô, he
now shares the frame with Kayano, who shares the news of Anju’s death.

The camera moves to follow Zushio as he makes his way
back through the crowd...

Kayano answers his question,
revealing Anju's fate.

It’s intimidating to consider the directorial mastery
necessary to organize a remarkable scene like this. Each of the three
actors deliver performances that sear into the memory. Two of these
actors are separated by a considerable distance, only united by the movement of
the camera. Linking the movement and serving as the center of the
narrative, the actor Yoshiaki Hanayagi who plays Zushiô must convey a strength
of character that the viewer has not previously seen in his character. He pulls it off beautifully. Meanwhile,
Mizoguchi must direct and choreograph the unruly crowd, keeping their actions
believable. The moving camera must capture Zushiô’s power and status as
governor and then just as effectively convey moments of intimate
confession. In over a century of filmmaking spread across
hundreds of countries, only a few dozen directors have shown a comparable
mastery. This one scene is like a film school in miniature.

1954 Japanese poster forSansho the Bailiff.

Reference Sources

Personal Views: Explorations in Film by Robin Wood

Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato

“Sanshô dayûand the Overthrow of History”by Carole Cavanaugh, essay included with Criterion DVD

A profound meditation on compassion and mercy, Sansho the Bailiff (1954) builds
its power through the ethical wisdom of its narrative and the beauty
and power of its visual expression. For each of these six entries, there
will be a two-pronged focus, first on the ethics of Sansho the Bailiff and second on visual analysis of targeted
scenes.

The Ethics of Sansho the Bailiff: Giri

My son Terry says that I have to address giri. I trust him on this. A
fairly sophisticated follower of anime, Terry has picked up on a fair amount of
Japanese culture over the years. He recently watched Sansho the Bailiff with me and liked it very much, but thought I
was probably missing some cultural attitudes that are assumed in the
movie.

Of course, he’s right. Noted film critic Robin Wood dealt
with a similar problem in the opening paragraphs of “The Ghost Princess and the Seaweed Gatherer,” his essay on director
Kenji Mizoguchi and Sansho the Bailiff.
A friend confronted Wood with the question of whether an outsider—with limited understanding of Japanese culture—should even attempt critical analysis
of a movie like Sansho the Bailiff.
Wood thoughtfully responded that it was possible: “… (give or take a few details) the essential
significance of Sansho Dayu can be
deduced from the specific realization of the film.” Although I suspect some those pesky give-or-take details
may be more important than Wood suggests, I’ve nevertheless blundered forward
with these essays, hoping that I am seeing enough of that essential
significance.

Terry would have challenged Robin Wood, too. His contention is that you have to have some
understanding of giri to see it. After all, it would be unreasonable to expect Wood or me
to pick up on a subtext that’s never mentioned.
And, unfortunately, it’s in the nature of giri to remain unspoken.

Zushio's letter of resignation.

It’s not helpful that the word giri has no English equivalent.
It’s a concept that is largely foreign to Western culture, referencing a
very different code of behavior. To the
best of my understanding, giri refers
to a sense of obligation that individuals nurture toward their communities
(family, neighborhood, business, and state). With giri, there is always an unspoken expectation that duties will be
fulfilled and debt-based obligations will be repaid. The businessman will
stand by the company that employs him; the son will stand by his family. Gifts
will be appropriately reciprocated. The
individual will not bring shame upon others in their community. It’s an elaborate
and unwritten social code that is silently followed. You’re just supposed to know these things.

Zushio fulfills his obligation,
resigning the governorship.

Giri is probably
most explicitly depicted in Sansho the Bailiff in the scene where Zushiô resigns his governorship. In following
his obligations to family, Zushiô is
aware that he has overstepped his proper bounds as governor and therefore he
accepts the unspoken expectation that he must respond appropriately. He submits
a letter of resignation and walks away, silently fulfilling his side of the
social contract.

But that’s not the only place where giri is operative. Terry
thinks giri is a significant
component of the scene where Anju sacrifices herself in a suicide by
drowning. In the context of the narrative, she commits the act solely to
benefit the family. It increases Zushiô ’s chances of succeeding in his
escape from the slave compound and it increases the obligation of Zushiô to maintain his side of the family contract.

My Terry-inspired research into giri uncovered yet another Japanese concept that may be in play
during the key scene of Anju’s suicide. It’s the Zen Buddhist concept of enso, in which a circle symbolizes,
well, practically everything—the yin
and yang of the universe, along with our potential mental ability to achieve an
enlightened awareness of a great unity. I think the spreading circles on
the water are enso. Even
without an understanding of the specific spiritual ideas behind enso, it may be impossible to miss the universal nature of the symbol. This may count as that “essential significance” that
Wood believes is available to all viewers, even when we’re unaware of the exact
culture referent. Anju’s act will create
ripples that will expand outward from the center. Even a solitary act
taking place in seclusion can have universal significance.

Enso, a Buddhist concept.

Self-Sacrifice in
Action

Anju (Kyoko Kagawa).

Some viewers feel that Sansho
the Bailiff is all anti-climax after Anju’s suicide. Certainly the
movie breaks into two at this point, switching from a narrative about two
children to a narrative about one. As Anju is the most overwhelmingly
sympathetic character in the movie, her death is a devastating moment.
The cutaway from the lake to the interior of a monastery begins the
introduction of new themes and subplots that need time to simmer before there
can be any scenes of comparable power.

The movie slows down for Anju’s suicide. Up until this point director Kenji Mizoguchi has
employed his full arsenal of visual movement—tracking shots, pans, and crane
shots. Within individual shots, he’s
emphasized strong diagonals. But all these
elements are dropped for the scene by the lake.
Now the camera setups are static and the key imagery is circular and
vertical. It’s a clear break from the
action, with the imagery and pacing reset for meditation.

Kayano framed by the gate.

The old slave woman Kayano, who has just helped Anju leave
the compound, is drawn by curiosity to the door of the gate herself.
The fence of the compound is a natural part
of the plot, but functions symbolically as well. Slavery
is inside the fence; freedom is outside. The prison bars of the
fence divide this world and the doors are usually well guarded. Outside
the gate, Kayano first moves to the right but then returns as she looks
for Anju, her figure framed within the doorway.

The series of shots of Anju at the lake are visually
haunting. The first of them is from the
greatest distance, approximating the perspective of Kayano looking down the
hillside to the hazy lakeshore. Cinematographer
Kazuo Miyagawa was known for painting leaves to achieve the high contrast of a
painted screen or scroll in his exteriors—he may have done that here. As Anju says a prayer then removes her
sandals, her mother’s song quietly enters on the soundtrack. Anju walks into the lake and Mizoguchi cuts to a closer shot of her, with the foreground vegetation framing the shot to create a circular composition. She descends into the water to her waist.

Anju descends into the lake.

Kayano falls to her knees and prays.

Cut back to Kayano, watching on the hill. It’s a closer shot that frames her within the
vertical bars of the doorway. She falls
to her knees in prayer. This shot discreetly
spares us a view of Anju’s last moments.

When the movie cuts back to the lake for an even closer
shot, all we see are the expanding concentric circles.

Expanding circles on the lake.

There is no dissolve to the next scene, even though it
constitutes a major break in the narrative.
It’s a straight cutaway to a static shot of men praying in front of a
giant Buddha in a monastery. Visual
themes from the past scene are beautifully retained. The doorway frame that we just saw Kayano praying
through now becomes a frame of pillars, still containing an image of prayer. From the expanding circles of the lake, we
move to a Buddha, framed in circles. Anju’s act is spiritual, linked to the compassionate
Buddhism that informs the movie.

Vertical frames, prayer, and circles silhouetting
the Buddha, as the scene abruptly shifts
from the lakeside to the monastery.

Reference Sources

Personal Views: Explorations in Film by Robin Wood

Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato

“Sanshô dayûand the Overthrow of History”by Carole Cavanaugh, essay included with Criterion DVD

About 21 Essays

21 Essays is my cultural history blog. In 2007, I challenged myself to write 21 essays in 21 days on a single focused topic—the classic German silent film The Golem (1920).I liked that format and so I’m reviving it here as a way of exploring favorite things (movies, books, paintings, etc.) in depth.

About the Author

Lee Price is the Director of Development at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (Philadelphia, PA). In addition, he writes a tourism/history blog called "Tour America's Treasures" and recently concluded two limited-duration blogs, "June and Art" and "Preserving a Family Collection."

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"There's something I'm finding out as I'm aging--that I am in love with the world."